Melissa Leo wants to make sure that this year her Oscar campaign ends with a win. It also looks like she wants to get another gig. This woman has some serious guts to put herself out there with these “consider Melissa Leo” ads which she self financed according to Deadline.

This is a woman who toiled for years, decades, in anonymity and now she is being smart and taking advantage of her new found platform. She first came to the world’s attention with her spectacular performance in Frozen River which got her an Oscar nomination and now everyone has noticed her mama bear performance as Alice Ward in The Fighter.

The beauty of Melissa Leo is that she is at the age where her works speaks for itself and that she is not afraid to speak the truth about sexist Hollywood and the cating couch as she did in a recent interview with Vanity Fair and the Guardian

VF: Seriously, though, this can be a male-dominated industry, but even just creatively it’s important to get that female perspective up on-screen.

ML: Well, Kathryn Bigelow gave us a lot of help last year. You’re just starting to hear more and more about women directors. You know, it takes a while for people to evolve.

VF: Sometimes I feel Hollywood is secretly one of the most conservative cultures —

ML: Yeah, it’s thought of as a trend-setting thing. But it’s sort of the opposite.

From the Guardian

I was asked by the director of a film to show him my breasts, privately, in an office in Los Angeles. It still remains a hard memory for me. The fact that I did it, because of my upbringing, and didn’t tell him to go and fuck himself.

I just love her and her guts.